In the fourteenth century financial accounts of the lordship of Ogmore record five mills two of which lay near Ogmore Castle in the lowland Englishry. The 'mill of Ogmore?, the most highly valued, appears named as such in the accounts. A repair account for it is entered under the 'grangia de Wyke', a grange or manorial farm of the lordship, and the detail of costs includes repairs to what is clearly a water mill (1).
A grant of land to Neath Abbey in about 1140 included the gift of a site for a mill on the Ewenny River (see NPRN 414191). The stipulation that the mill must not `harm? the lord's own mills downstream 'by holding back the water' suggests that Ogmore Mill was already present in the twelfth century. A sixteenth century map (in the National Archives) refers to it as `King's Mill?; the mill was also the subject of several suit of mill disputes in the seventeenth century (2).
The mill is shown on the first edition OS 25-inch plan as a functioning water corn mill powered from a ? kilometre long leat tapping the Ewenny river. The mill was situated about ? of a kilometre (half a mile) upstream from the castle. By the time of the second edition of the map (c.1900) the mill had been converted to a water pumping station. It is now a tavern/ restaurant. Faint traces of the mill race can be seen close to the mill on air photos; farmland improvements have mostly eradicated it.

(1) NA, DL 29/592/9445 Lordship of Ogmore ministers' accounts, 4-5 RII (1381-2)
(2) NLW, Dunraven Estate Papers. Ogmore Manor or Lordship, Llangeinor Parish. 4/1 (Box 4)

David Leighton, RCAHMW, 13 July 2011